1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid-droplet jetting apparatus which jets a liquid droplet of a liquid and to a method for producing the liquid-droplet jetting apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a liquid-droplet jetting apparatus jetting liquid droplets, Japanese patent application laid-open No. 2001-301167 (see FIGS. 2 and 3) discloses an ink-jet head which records a desired image, letter and/or the like on a recording paper by jetting an ink from nozzles onto the recording paper. The ink-jet head described in Japanese patent application laid-open No. 2001-301167 is provided with a plurality of nozzles, a plurality of pressure chambers which communicate with the nozzles respectively and which are arranged in a row in a row direction, and two manifolds which communicate with the pressure chambers and which extend on both sides of the row of the pressure chambers (pressure-chamber row) respectively, along the row direction of the pressure chambers. When an actuator applies pressure to the ink supplied from the manifolds to the pressure chambers, the ink is jetted from the nozzles communicating with the pressure chambers respectively.
Here, the pressure chambers arranged in one row are communicated with the two manifolds such that adjacent pressure chambers among the pressure chambers are communicated alternately with the two manifolds which are arranged at the both sides of the pressure-chamber row. Namely, different manifolds supply the ink to the two adjacent pressure chambers respectively. Therefore, it is possible to prevent the change in pressure (pressure change) generated in a certain pressure chamber from propagating via the manifold to another pressure chamber adjacent to the certain pressure chamber, thereby suppressing occurrence of the crosstalk.
In the ink-jet head of Japanese patent application laid-open No. 2001-301167 as described above, however, the pressure-chamber row is arranged between the two manifolds. Therefore, the two manifolds are arranged to be apart from each other, which in turn makes the structure of channels (flow passages) as a whole becomes wide across a plane in which the pressure chambers are arranged, thereby consequently making the ink-jet head to be large by the wide size of the channel construction. Also, when an attempt is made to arrange the two manifolds adjacent closely with each other to thereby make the channel structure to be compact, there arises the following problem. That is, in such a case, the lengths of channels, communicating the pressure chambers and manifolds respectively, need to be different among the pressure chambers. Due to this, an amount of the ink supplied to the plurality of pressure chambers (ink supply amount) is different or varied among the pressure chambers. Therefore, the variation in liquid-droplet jetting characteristic becomes great among the plurality of nozzles communicating with the pressure chambers respectively.